Watertiger has left a barnburner of a post at Firedoglake about Mr Bu$h making a magic carpet appearance at Walter Reed today, and being shown a “typical” but empty room equipped with “wide screen TV and a Macintosh computer on a desk.

Bush first toured a typical — but empty — patient room in Abrams Hall, where soldiers were transferred after they were vacated from the facility's Building 18, where moldy walls, rodent infestation and other problems went unchecked until reported by the media. The room Bush saw featured a wide-screen television and a Macintosh computer on a desk.

"I appreciate that soldiers have got a Mac" to communicate with their families, the president said.

The room he was shown is actually in Abrams Hall, which – sit down now, because this will shock you – was not actually established to house wounded soldiers. Mausergirl used to work at WRAMC:

Medical hold soldiers and some of the hospital staff live in Abrams Hall, which I've pointed out on the map as well. Abrams Hall is home to some 540 soldiers, and that is the barracks I was talking about in my past post about Walter Reed that has recently been completely refurbished - well, in the time I worked there and when I was there last, anyway. Rooms are set up as small "apartments" and have a living area, a sleeping area, and a bathroom. Soldiers are staying two or three to a room, with medical hold soldiers, three to a room is the norm. There are laundry rooms, common areas, and vending machines.

For those of you who don’t know about military hospitals, the Medical Holding Company is where you stash soldiers who have completed treatment, and are awaiting administrative disposition – either release and transfer to a regular post or discharge from the Army. The point is that in Med Hold you’re no longer in “patient” status and not yet returned to a “duty” status. Obviously if it is used as a barracks area for staff it is outside the regular medical circuit of the hospital.

Even when they try to do an eyewash publicity stunt they over reach.

Watertiger takes off on our phoney baloney “Commander-in-Chief with great abandon, unsheathed sword pen and magnum-power insult.

One small point of disagreement:

The conditions at Walter Reed and the shameful treatment of our returning servicemen and women are just another example of how the Bush administration has cloaked incompetence [emph added] in a cloud of Orwellian doublespeak. From the very start, the Bush spin machine has arrogantly manipulated words and images, constructing Potemkin villages out of everything from "Compassionate Conservativism" to Social Security "reform" to "No Child Left Behind" to the war in Iraq.

It’s not really “incompetence” Watertiger. It’s lack of interest. The military are just stuffed dolls to make him feel important. The truth is that he doesn’t give the south end of a hairy rat about those troops, nor about more than 200 million Americans. If we all died tomorrow he wouldn’t spend a moment’s thought on us.